by: John Van Doren

Part II - American Dream or American Myth?

If you’re still playing by the “How to Achieve the American Dream”
rules of your father and grandfather, then:

1. You’ve been downsized out of one or more jobs.

2. You company merged with corporation ABC and you’ve been
rightsized out of a job to reap the “synergies” of the merger.

3. You’ve trained your replacement in Bangalore prior to your job
being outsourced.

4. You’re working 60 to 80 hour per week and getting paid for 40
hours out of fear of either 1), 2), or 3) above.

5. You’re working under contract and think you’re an entrepreneur or
a “consultant”, but you’re really just an “employee without health
benefits”.

6. You’re recently retired from a large corporation with a “secure”
pension that’s about to be decimated (defaulted to the federal
government) so your former employer can continue to compete in the
global economy.

The job churn I’ve just described is not just about globalization,
however globalization and a digital world with high bandwidth has
altered the playing field in corporate america and labor is now a
commodity that can and will be acquired anywhere in the world. That
either means off-shoring production and even R&D to places like
Mexico or China, or digitally outsourcing high skilled jobs like
software development to India.

You could argue that not every job is pressured by globalization and
you’d be right. There are about 50 million private-sector workers
(nurses, truckers, supermarket and other retail clerks, hotel and
restaurant employees, construction workers, janitors, security
guards, etc.) whose jobs can't be shipped to Beijing or Calcutta.
However, these are not the high paying jobs you and I are talking
about. The hard fact is that for more and more highly trained and
skilled workers the labor pool is now global and you’re competing
for work with a newly minted accountant, MBA, software engineer, or
physics Ph.D. from India, Singapore, the former Soviet block, or
China.

In the last fifteen years the global workforce has doubled in large
part due to the embrace of market capitalism by India, China, the
countries of the ex-Soviet Union. In addition, U.S. technical
dominance and its share of science and engineering graduates at all
degree levels is declining rapidly. In 1970 over half of world’s the
science and engineering doctorates were granted in the U.S. Today,
the European Union has already surpassed the U.S. and projections
for 2010 show the EU producing twice as many science and engineering
doctorates as the U.S. and if current trends continue, China will
actually surpass the U.S. Bottom line, more justification for U.S.
Corporations to move R&D and other science and engineering functions
offshore.

So what are your choices? You might decide that you’re powerless and
blame corporate greed and hope the government or “someone” will step
in to protect your “sovereign right” to a high paying job. After
all, you did all the right things, got that great education, made
good grades, and worked hard. Well for one, corporations are not
being greedy they are just seeking the lowest cost of doing business
and competing as well as they can. If that is no longer in the best
interests of the their “county of origin” labor pool, that is not
their problem. Their allegiance is to the shareholder, that is how
they are structured and financed. Think the government with save
you? Think again, corporations accounted for a huge amount of the
funds raised in the last election cycle and therefore own a good
deal of political capital. Besides that, globalization in the long
run is good for the world economy and for our long-term prospects of
peace and prosperity. However, in the near term it’s going to be
painful transition unless you wake up to the fact the the ground has
shifted and you have to find a new way to achieve Your American
Dream.

About the author:
John Van Doren is former turnaround and startup executive in the
manufacturing sector. His is currently an independent entrepreneur
devoted to redefining the American Dream
{www.youramericandream.info} in the context of a digital and global
economy.